


what if the world was different

by UnofficiallyA



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drug Use, F/F, F/M, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Little bit of graphic injuries, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con Elements, Recovery, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Trauma, Underage Drinking, Underage Sex, Underage Smoking, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 12:10:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20257888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnofficiallyA/pseuds/UnofficiallyA
Summary: Kara leaves alex to go to clark, a few years after she landed. Alex has two years of high school left. She makes some bad choices and a lot of bad people take advantage of that.





	what if the world was different

**Author's Note:**

> Im not fucking around. just read the tags and if this is going to be detrimental to you please just walk away.  
Id like to say this is happy but its not. Alex gets raped and abused multiple times and its a kinda oneshot at how she deals with that.  
Im likely going to write a chapter two with a happy ending but i dont know when. Theres a lot of recovery that im not the correct headspace to write so dont expect it soon. 
> 
> Once more. Read at your own risk.

It started by mistake really. One night bled into another and she couldn't pinpoint the night it started exactly but she knew the week. Exam week. Stress was at an all-time high and she'd just flunked her exam. She'd found a bar that didn't card her and she spent more time there than she cared to admit. 

It didn't take long for some of the regulars to notice the young girl in their bar. Ordering strong drinks night after night. It took only a week for a man to approach her, offering conversations and innocence. 

It took a day more for her to go home with him. She didn't mean too, she was drunk and she'd always wondered if older men were better than high school boys. So she let him have his way with her. Let him fuck her, in the car and then in a hotel room at the edge of town. 

He offered her a smoke and she accepted. He gave her the pack, muttering something about it being payment and sent her on her way. Drunk off her face, miles from home in an unfamiliar neighbourhood. She didn't think twice about ordering a cab.

Her fake ID did the job for the next year, 17 and in her last year of high school. She pulled her shit together and only smoked occasionally when she needed to destress. Fast-tracked formed, she knew what it was doing to her, she knew how bad it was but she couldn't find it in her to care, as she took a drag, and let the stress flow out with the smoke. 

It took until college for Eliza to notice, it took them until the second semester when she popped in unexpectedly The smoking was something she got grilled about by her mother, as the occasional pack turned into one a week. An hour-long lecture of how she was killing her body before she was left and had hours of study left. 

She couldn't study, she tried for hours but the words swam and eventually she let her roommate drag her out to the nearest party. College boys and girls cramped into a house, it wasn't pleasant but the running beer made it all okay in an hour. Drunk and smiling, Alex let herself become a part of the throng of people that were dancing to some bass-filled music.  
Jumping and dancing for hours. Grinding and flirting through movements until someone dragged her upstairs and fucked her. It wasn't good. She didn't expect it to be, but she didn't expect to wake up the next morning to vivid flashbacks of her late high school days. Of the older men. 

Alex did what she did best. Repress. Deny. And fight to maintain sanity. She was plagued by memories, and visions, and nightmares. The nightmares were what got to her, was what her to throwing her fathers inheritance into alcohol and more alcohol. She wondered what he would think occasionally, but that thought was often a fleeting moment in a haze of alcohol, and smoke. She didn't remember when she started lacing her cigarettes with weed, but those were some of the worst days of her life. 

A week of being stoned and drunk, sleeping for maybe three hours, when she passed out at a frat party. A mistake and a judgement call that she almost lost her life over. She didn't remember much. She woke up a few times. Boys were fucking her. She remembered faceless men, pain, and the stench of the room, the sweat and the sex that stuck to her. That morning was the worst of her life.

A video had been shared around the school. She was the star. She had been unconscious, and those boys got expelled. She supposed it was good, but all she could remember was a pain. Pain and an inability to move. Fear so powerfully overwhelming that the next week she had two panic attacks a day. 

Then she made her first attempt. It turned out slicing open a wrist was a lot harder than she had anticipated and she ended up in hospital when her roommate found her on their bathroom floor. The hospital was a piece of cake and she was out within a day. She went home, visited her mom and stole a prescription pill pad and a photo of her mothers signature. 

her second attempt almost worked, if she hadn't been found by those stupid tourists. They saw a passed out woman and called an ambulance. This time she was stuck in the hospital for almost a week. But by some miracle had almost no long term damage, except some memory damage. 

Not the right kind of memory damage, just enough to make her forget some friends. She still remembered the haze with the clarity she was fighting to escape. So she got out of the hospital, managed once more to avoid her mothers punishing gaze and made attempt number three.

Drinking as much as she could handle, chain-smoking weed, and then hopping in her car and hitting the freeway. She didn't remember anything of that night, only that she was still alive. Her knee was crushed, her arm broken but that was all the injuries she had. She was told she had hit a tree going 110 miles an hour. She had enough alcohol in her to kill another human and she was so high she still wasn't feeling a drop of pain.

The worst outcome. This time, the hospital got the drift and sectioned her, putting a guard in front of her door and calling her mother. Eliza showed up in a frenzy, yelling at doctors and trying to take control of her daughters case, but after a few minutes of yelling, she just sat crying by the side of the bed. Asking what was going on, how she could help. 

Questions Alex hadn't thought she'd ask. Alex wasn't really aware of herself, but those questions from the woman who had left her alone with a Kryptonian for most of her life, with no guidance. She wondered if Kara hadn't left her alone, hadn't gone to the metropolis to learn from Clark.

She wondered about that a lot. Probably more than was healthy. But she was abandoned by the kid she raised, the sister that had fallen from the sky. Alex remembered teaching her the nuances of English and training her in how smart she could be in maths, despite being light years ahead of what was the progress on earth. Alex remembered countless nights that they had just stayed up, watching the stars as Kara recounted stories from her planet.

So Eliza asking what she could do to help broke Alex. She cried deep sobs that cut into her chest. She heaved in-breaths but even that wasn't enough and she was struggling to breathe. One lungful in made her head spin and the next made her vision fade in and out. Nurses rushed in and Eliza moved out, letting the staff do their job. Knowing if she interfered she would only slow the process down. 

Alex didn't remember the next few days. Spent on a hospital bed, recounting the horrible choices she had made. Recounting the horrible things they had done to her. memories she'd been fighting on her own came spilling out in one long wave. She was admitted to the mental health ward and she stayed there for a while. Months. Of shrinks and medications, of long days with little to do, fewer people to talk too and a school that didn't want her.

She dropped out, moved back to Midvale, focussed on her health for a year. She went through behaviour therapy and she began to heal. After a year, she reapplied for the local college studying science and chemistry and anything that interested her. She quit alcohol, weed, anything that affected her mood severely. Smoking was the one vice she didn't quit. Eliza didn't fight her on it, and she wasn't a pack a day smoker, so it wasn't too much of a problem. 

She graduated a year ahead of schedule and moved to national city, finding jobs where she could. A delivery job by night and cafes by day. It wasn't great work but she made bank and eventually saved up enough to get her own motorcycle, a Ducati. She wasn't okay all the time, she still had flashbacks, but she could manage them now. They still drained her, but it wasn't all her energy. She functioned like everybody else and slowly it faded into her past. A few reminders of her bad days lingered in the form of a limp and a few scars that would never truly fade. But she'd made her peace with that.

Suddenly she was 28, living in a studio apartment in a nice neighbourhood, managing a cafe and delivering pizzas by night. It was an idyllic world, she wasn't struggling but she was happy. She could afford meds all the time, and she wasn't worried about money. She had a savings account. With more than a few dollars in it. It truly was the best life she could be living.

Then Kara showed up on her doorstep. A supersuit on, and an excited grin on her face. "I'm moving to the national city."

Those words filled Alex with dread. She'd barely spoken with Kara since they were teens, so hurt by the betrayal and then not wanting Kara to witness the following breakdown, hadn't tried to reconnect over the years. So her baby sister standing in front of her all grown was more than enough to send her into a panic attack. 

Struggling for breath she quickly navigated her apartment and found the pack of smokes sitting next to her anti-anxiety meds. Popping two and slipping onto her balcony she lit up her smoke. The burning smoke cut through to her aching lungs and they started cooperating, breathing in and out slowly.

It only took her 10 minutes to regain her composure and greet her little sister, but it was enough to confuse Kara. Alex took another drag and then waved Kara over, ready to catch up on all she'd missed. Hours later and a very watered-down version of what happened to Alex had Kara leaving, ready to face whatever crimes were happening somewhere in the city. 

It felt like the first breath she'd drawn in hours, free and clear of the overwhelming fear she felt around her adoptive sister. Those years had served Kara well, she'd bonded with Clark and in return, he'd taught her all about how to be a hero. It hurt a little, to see how well Kara was doing while Alex had been floundering. But the past was in the past and even if Alex had the worst nightmare she'd had in years, and had to call in sick to work the next day, at least Kara was back in her life.


End file.
